1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a keyboard, and more particularly to a keyboard of a portable electronic device.
2. Related Art
Nowadays, notebooks (NBs) are becoming lightweight and thin, so that all the components are becoming thinner and thinner. However, when the materials become lightweight and thin, strength is often sacrificed. The keyboard is a typical example. The original support plate material has gradually changed from a 0.6-mm thick aluminum plate to a 0.2-mm thick stainless steel plate. Even if the material becomes the stainless steel with a relatively high strength, the overall strength is still lower. Consequently, some relevant tests and requirements become difficult to meet, while consumers also experience poor product quality. Therefore, an improved keyboard support plate is proposed, where the joint between an upper cover and a keyboard support plate is enhanced through the technique during assembling and a structure corresponding to the upper cover, so as to improve the overall quality.
In the process and technique of production line assembling of the portable electronic device, the keyboard is often assembled in the last several stages, and due to the limitation of the industrial design, the keyboard generally can only be assembled from outside surfaces, so that in addition to one or two rear locking screws, the keyboard can be fixed through ambient hook structures only. However, when the strength of the keyboard support plate is reduced due to the thickness decrease of the keyboard support plate and the area is increased as a numeric keypad is added, the keyboard cannot be firmly fixed only through the ambient hook structures.
One of the reasons why the keyboard cannot be firmly fixed on the portable electronic device only through the ambient hooks is that the length of the joint between the hook and a hole cannot be increased. The reason why the length cannot be increased is that when the keyboard is mounted on the portable electronic device, the hole on the electronic device is aligned with the hook over the electronic device, the hook is inserted into the hole, and then the hook slides a certain distance (generally, not greater than 3 mm), in the width direction or the length direction, so that the hook is locked in the hole, and the keyboard is fixed on the electronic device. However, in order to reach a smaller size of the electronic device, the width of the keyboard should be close to or equal to the width of the electronic device. The sliding distance required during the foregoing assembling of the keyboard causes difficulties for designers in reducing the width of the electronic device.
Additionally, that the keyboard is fixed on the electronic device only through the locking screw, also causes difficulties for designers wishing to reduce the thickness of the electronic device. Since elements with significant thickness, such as a hard disk or an optical disk drive, are often disposed inside the electronic device, if the keyboard is fixed completely through the locking screw, in order to reduce the thickness of the electronic device, the locking screw cannot be mounted at a position over the hard disk or the optical disk drive, thereby causing another design trouble.
Consequently, the keyboard and the method for assembling a keyboard in the prior art have the problem that it is difficult to further make a portable electronic device thinner and narrower.